1863, Congress passed the National Banking Act, which authorized the federal government to issue United States Notes (paper money) rather than certificates redeemable in gold. On April 15, 1864, two weeks before the lease was due to expire, Willard tendered the down payment to Tayloe in paper money. Tayloe refused to issue the mortgage and turn over the deed, claiming that the hotel was now worth much more than $22,500 and that Willard had not paid in gold (the only form of cash available in 1854) as specified in the lease. Willard sued. The Supreme Court of the District of Columbia held against Willard. Willard appealed. In 1869, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the terms of the lease should not be interpreted as of the date it was agreed to (1854). Congress had made the use of gold and silver as currency illegal during the war, and this change in the law enabled Willard to pay the down payment in paper currency. The Court also held that the terms of the lease did not provide for a re-evaluation of the worth of the hotel, and that Willard was entitled to the original $22,500 purchase price. For many years, the decision was the leading case in contract law regarding intent and enforcement. Later life Tayloe married Phoebe Warren, one of his wife's friends, on April 17, 1849. The Tayloe household became a hub of entertaining and political activity once more after Whig Zachary Taylor became President in 1849. Tayloe remained an influential figure in national Whig politics even after Taylor's death on July 9, 1850, and the assumption of Millard Fillmore to the presidency. Tayloe made the first of two trips to Alabama to visit his business there in late 1850, and spent some time in the city of New Orleans, Louisiana, before traveling to Havana, Cuba. Although Tayloe was an influential backer of Fillmore for re-election in 1852, he was on intimate terms with General Winfield Scott, the candidate who defeated Fillmore for the Whig nomination for president. During this period, Tayloe was also a director of the Monument Association, which was striving to build the Washington Monument. He was elected president of the Board of Trustees of the Washington Orphan Asylum in 1855, and from 1865 until his death in 1868 was president of the Society of the Oldest Inhabitants of DC (an association of citizens who had